Solar Module Waste: The Unresolved Hazard

India is poorly positioned to handle PV waste as it does not yet have policy guidelines on the same. The lack of a policy framework is coupled with the fact that even basic recycling facilities for laminated glass and e-waste are unavailable. Despite the e-waste regulation being in place for over seven years, only less than 4% of estimated e-waste is recycled in the organized sector as per the latest estimates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

 

Mandating recycling is the need of the hour else most of these modules will go to landfill. Solar modules use potentially hazardous materials, including lead compounds, polymers and cadmium compounds, land filling also creates new environmental hazards as the toxic materials can leach out as they break down and valuable naturals resources would go to waste. As per reports right now, we are recycling around 10 percent of solar panels, the rest goes to landfills or are exported overseas for reuse in developing countries with weak environmental protections.  Also, the cost recycling is also not commercially attractive right now, the cost of recycling the panel in the US is between $12 and $25— after transportation costs, which “oftentimes equal the cost to recycle.”  At the same time,  in states that allow landfill, it typically costs less than a dollar to dump a solar panel in a solid-waste landfill.

 

 

The big blind spot in the US for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue,” said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao. “It’s on the order of a 10-to-1 ratio.”

 

If a solar panel’s more valuable components—namely, the silicon and silver— could be separated and purified efficiently, that could improve that cost-to-revenue ratio. Many researches are being incurred to recapture the material during separation. A team lead by National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists calls for the development of new recycling processes in which all metals and minerals are recovered at high purity, “named a high-value, integrated recycling system”, said lead study author Garvin Heath. “High-value means we want to recover all the constituent materials that have value from these modules.

 

Integrated refers to a recycling process that can go after all of these materials, and not have to cascade from one recycler to the next.”

 

In addition to developing better recycling methods, the solar industry should be thinking about how to repurpose panels whenever possible. Recycle PV Solar also recertifies and resells good-condition panels it receives, helps offset the cost of recycling.